Poetry, Art, Medicine & Society

“ASTRONAUT GOES FROM MIGRANT FIELDS TO OUTER SPACE”

For José M. Hernández

The boy squatting with a wood and wire crate
In Salinas has finally risen
Above his station, California almost
Beautiful from this distance. Now when he bends
To the heavy glass he’s hurtling through
Vacuum cold as night on the desert
When coyotes bring the families across
In rust gnawed pick ups and then on foot.
He’s glossing over vast tracts of years, entire lives
In dirt and of dirt, obligations. He orbits
His parents talking low in their bed,
His mother’s sorrow the high pitch of rain
Against the hut’s metal blinds. In zero
Gravity the work is easy; nothing weighs
On the heart. He rides openly, needn’t hide
In back with shovels under a tarp.
The earth is no longer soil but rainbow blue
And round as fruit. His itinerant efforts pay back
In stars. Now heaven is mestizo, offers
Fine shades, not just Milky Way black and white.
Let the good news fall gently back to earth.
Let today’s harvest be measured not in pounds
But raised eyes, and miles, and light.

–David Moolten

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David Moolten

About me: I'm the author of three books of poetry, Plums & Ashes (Northeastern University, 1994), which won the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize, Especially Then (David Robert Books, 2005), and Primitive Mood, which won the 2009 T.S. Eliot Prize from Truman State University Press, and was published in 2009.

I'm also a physician specializing in transfusion medicine, and I live, write and practice in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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Audio Files

'Cuda(Originally appeared in The Kenyon Review)

Ode For Orville And Wilbur Wright(Originally appeared in The Southern Review)

Ode For Orville And Wilbur Wright

I don't yearn for their steep excursion
Into fame and fortune, for it had
The usual price, and Orville died bitter
And Wilbur died young. I envy them
Only the slender and empty distance they left
Between them and a seaside's grassy bluffs
In mild December, the frail ingenuity
Of dreams, a lifetime's hopes made of string and cloth
And a little puttering motor that might have run
A lawn mower if the brothers had put their minds
To one first. For dumb exhilaration, nothing --
Not an F-16 thundering from its base
In Turkey nor my redeye circling O'Hare --
Comes close to what they must have felt
For less than a shaking, clattering minute
Clearing all attachment to the world
Of dickering and petty concerns: for some
No other heaven. So I take note of them
As they took notes from the lonely buzzard, obsessed
To the point of love with the ghostly air
And the small fluttering things that wandered
Through it. Eccentric but never flighty,
Bookish but not above nicking their hands
In bicycle shops and basements, they lived
With their sister and tinkered with the future.
Propelled by ambition, the mandate
It invents, they still heeded the laws
Of nature, trimmed needless weight, saw everything
Even themselves as burden, determined
Not to crash and burn. Sheer will launched them,
Good will, because those first forty yards
Skimming shale and reeds were for everyone.
Face down between the struts, staring at the ground
As it blurred past, they failed like anyone
To grasp the implications. But legs flailing
They hung on, buoyed by never and almost
And then just barely. I could do worse
Than their brief rapture, their common sense
Of purpose. Or I could, if only
For a moment, exalt them, go along
With the jury-rigged myth, the quaint
Contrivance that lets them rise above it all.

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Howard Trachtman, MD Department of Pediatrics NYU School of Medicine Throughout history, reading books has often been viewed with deep suspicion by figures in authority. The Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola collected and publically burned thousands of objects including books on February 7, 1497 in Florence, Italy, an infamous episode that […]

What a lovely poem with some tender moments i.e.the immigrant having to hide with the shovels… parents whispering in low voices and his mother’s sorrow
Lovely lines…
His itinerant efforts paid in stars…
rainbow blue and round as fruit
Let the good news fall gently back to earth(slightly Shakespearean…it droppeth like the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath)
Well done .I enjoyed this .

Thanks for taking the time to read it Nathan. Though I have only the benefit of pictures, from an astronaut’s perspective there’s nothing more beautiful than the earth seen from such distance. It’s too bad things aren’t more beautiful close up.

A radiant praise song for a worthy contemporary hero. The poem has so much to admire. The line breaks do so much skillful poetic work — risen / Above his station; orbits / His parents; nothing weighs / On the heart. I hope you share the poem with the astronaut — find his email address. I’ve sent poems to people about whom I’ve written, and they’ve been most grateful. Beautiful work.